An East Hampton Renovation Fit for a Ship’s Captain

To get their great retreat in the Hamptons, Frank Selvaggi and Invoice Shea didn’t just renovate 1 household — they overhauled two. But that wasn’t the unique plan.

In 2015, the pair purchased a smaller cottage in Amagansett, N.Y., for about $1 million, on a avenue nestled amid sand dunes extending to the ocean. The dwelling was modest — significantly less than 600 square toes — but they figured they did not have to have quite substantially place. And even if they experienced needed to broaden, neighborhood setting up regulations made it virtually impossible.

The construction, even so, was in determined require of do the job, so they hired Kyle O’Donnell, the founder of the New York-primarily based agency Gramercy Layout, to rebuild it inside the original footprint.

“There was no insulation. There was scarcely a basis. The rafters had been undersized for the roof,” Mr. O’Donnell reported. “It was just a summer cottage, held up by not a lot. All the things had to be changed.”

Mr. O’Donnell accomplished ideas for the rebuild, but just as building was about to begin, the couple, now equally 62, started obtaining 2nd views. Mr. Shea, a freelance creative director, prepared to take a look at the residence only periodically. But Mr. Selvaggi, a founding husband or wife at Altman, Greenfield & Selvaggi, a Manhattan accounting and enterprise administration company with movie star clientele like Anne Hathaway and Timothée Chalamet, commenced dreaming about residing in the Hamptons almost total-time in the summer season.

“I’m quite considerably parked out there for as long as I quite possibly can be,” Mr. Selvaggi explained, including that his partner is not quite as eager on shelling out limitless days on the sand. “He’s not as a great deal of a seaside man as I am.”

Continue to, he concerned they may well sense cramped in the little cottage with their pet dogs, Sherlock and Dodger. So it seemed like a stroke of luck when he struck up an opportune dialogue with a neighbor at a road affiliation meeting.

“We have been just chatting, and I mentioned, ‘Oh, I like the avenue so much. It would be fantastic if some thing bigger came up,’” Mr. Selvaggi explained. “He reported, ‘It’s way too undesirable you can’t buy the house future to me. The operator is hardly ever there.’”

Intrigued, Mr. Selvaggi tracked down the home’s owner, bought in contact and uncovered that the proprietor was receptive to selling. Just after some back and forth, Mr. Selvaggi and Mr. Shea struck a offer to get the 1,150-sq.-foot household for about $1.9 million in November 2016.

Their second property, it turned out, essential just as considerably function as the initially, as it had received only insignificant updates about the years. But the notion of starting up two design jobs concurrently was overwhelming, so as building proceeded on the initial dwelling, Mr. Selvaggi and Mr. Shea moved into the much larger a person devoid of shifting a thing.

By early 2018, the initial residence was finish. Fairly than going in, the couple sold it to Anthony Bonsignore, Mr. Selvaggi’s business associate, for $1.7 million, which Mr. Selvaggi claimed authorized the couple to crack even.

Then they expended another summer time in their larger, unrenovated cottage right after the constructing permit was delayed, and finally commenced their next renovation in September 2019.

Significantly like the very first task, this a person involved basically rebuilding the dwelling from scratch inside the unique footprint. But by incorporating dormers on the second ground, Mr. O’Donnell was ready to enhance the home’s sizing to pretty much 1,350 square feet, making space for three fairly sized bedrooms and two total bogs.

The layout includes a new floor-floor terrace guiding the house with a smaller pool and outdoor shower, a pair of terraces off the main suite on the 2nd flooring, and a rooftop terrace overlooking the dunes.

The exterior of the dwelling was beforehand brown-stained board-and-batten, but Mr. O’Donnell clad the new framework in cedar shingles and outlined the windows in Farrow & Ball’s Stone Blue, Mr. Selvaggi’s favored color.

Within, “the tactic was to make it as colourful as possible, and as enjoyable as achievable,” Mr. O’Donnell said, incorporating that he wished to make the rooms experience deeply comfy making use of materials that could stand up to soaked and sandy toes.

Most of the flooring is bleached, huge-plank white oak. In the living home, he protected the ceiling with V-groove paneling and additional a paneled detail to the partitions, which he outlined in Stone Blue. “It’s sort of a nod to a ship captain’s home, or anything you could possibly see in older homes out there,” Mr. O’Donnell claimed.

In the kitchen area, which he relocated to produce house for additional windows, he mounted teak cupboards reminiscent of ones that might be identified on a boat and added a countertop, backsplash and window trim in White Fantasy marble.

Upstairs, the key bed room has doors that open to terraces on two sides: a person for sitting and unwind the other, geared up with an out of doors shower, for exercise. The exercise terrace also connects to the main bathroom, which is completed in azure hexagonal tile and white marble.

Design was finished in June 2020, so Mr. Selvaggi and Mr. Shea did not skip a one summer time at the seaside. Like the household furniture and inside finishes, Mr. Selvaggi estimated that the challenge price tag about $2 million.

Now, right after residing by so many yrs of building, they have no intention of transferring everywhere else. “It’s fantastic out in this article,” claimed Mr. Selvaggi, who can walk to the seaside in a lot less than a minute and enjoys catching up with neighbors in excess of cocktails in the night.

Maybe finest of all, their new household has just the right volume of area to comfortably accommodate the pair, their dogs and friends, with no necessitating far too much maintenance, he reported: “It’s the excellent dimension for a seashore property.”

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